PHP Date Exercises : Check whether a date is a weekend or not

Last update on June 03 2025 12:56:49 (UTC/GMT +8 hours)

15. Check if Date is a Weekend

Write a PHP script to check whether a date is a weekend or not.

Sample Solution:

PHP Code:

<?php
$dt='2011-01-04'; // Assigning the date '2011-01-04' to the variable $dt.
$dt1 = strtotime($dt); // Converting the date string to a Unix timestamp and storing it in $dt1.
$dt2 = date("l", $dt1); // Formatting the Unix timestamp $dt1 to retrieve the day of the week in full textual representation (e.g., 'Monday') and storing it in $dt2.
$dt3 = strtolower($dt2); // Converting the day of the week to lowercase and storing it in $dt3.

if (($dt3 == "saturday") || ($dt3 == "sunday")) { // Checking if the day is Saturday or Sunday.
    echo $dt3.' is weekend'."\n"; // Outputting that it's a weekend if the day is Saturday or Sunday.
} else {
    echo $dt3.' is not weekend'."\n"; // Outputting that it's not a weekend if the day is not Saturday or Sunday.
}
?>

Output:

tuesday is not weekend

Explanation:

In the exercise above,

$dt='2011-01-04';: Assigning the date '2011-01-04' to the variable '$dt'.
$dt1 = strtotime($dt);: Converting the date string stored in '$dt' to a Unix timestamp and storing it in the variable '$dt1'.
$dt2 = date("l", $dt1);: Formatting the Unix timestamp stored in '$dt1' to retrieve the day of the week in full textual representation (e.g., 'Monday') and storing it in the variable '$dt2'.
$dt3 = strtolower($dt2);: Converting the day of the week stored in '$dt2' to lowercase and storing it in the variable '$dt3'.
Checking if the day stored in '$dt3' is Saturday or Sunday using an if-else statement.
Outputting whether the day is a weekend day or not based on the result of the if-else condition.

Flowchart :

For more Practice: Solve these Related Problems:

Write a PHP script to check if a given date falls on a weekend (Saturday or Sunday) and return a boolean.
Write a PHP function that accepts a date string and outputs a message indicating whether the date is a weekend or a weekday.
Write a PHP program to iterate over a range of dates and list only those that fall on weekends.
Write a PHP script to use the date() function to check if today is a weekend and display a corresponding special message.

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PHP Code Editor:

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